Laptops

• Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, There’s really no reason not to recommend the Yoga 2 Pro, as long as you’re okay with a purely functional design. It has solid performance, a good keyboard, a great screen, and a functional-at-worst trackpad. It’s also thin and light enough to go everywhere with me, and versatile enough to be usable everywhere from train seats to coffee shops. It’s a good laptop, and an excellent companion on a cold winter’s morning when there’s a lot of TV to watch and no earthly reason to get out of bed. Photo
• Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus, despite its overbranded software insanity, Samsung’s not trying to be weird, or different, or futuristic. It just built the best laptop it could, and at virtually every turn hit the nail on the head. A great laptop doesn’t need to become a tablet, or detach, or spin and swivel. It needs to have a great trackpad, a great keyboard, a great screen, great performance, and great battery life. The Ativ Book 9 Plus checks virtually every box — Samsung’s made a laptop that I can recommend to almost anyone that can afford it, as long as battery life isn't at the top of your wish list.Photo
• Apple MacBook Air (13-inch, 2013), We’ve been recommending the MacBook Air for three years straight now, so this is pretty simple: if you’re a normal person shopping for a laptop, you should buy a MacBook Air. It does all the things you want a laptop to do, it does them well, and now it does them for 12 hours at a clip. At $1,099 for the base model, $100 less than last year, it’s even a solid value compared to its best competition from Sony, Toshiba, and others — I’d jump up to the $1,299 model for the extra storage, but that’s about it. Every other complaint about this machine feels like a quibble (sigh, Ethernet adapter) or longing for spec-bump upgrades that don’t feel all that necessary yet (touchscreen Retina display, anyone?) But it’s pretty hard to value any of those things over 12-hour battery life.Photo
• Acer Aspire M5-481PT, The Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M5 isn't close to a perfect laptop, but it ticks so many of the right boxes for so many people that it has some real appeal. The lackluster screen and speakers make it an iffy choice for a purely multimedia machine, and it's not as stylish or responsive as some of the bleeding-edge ultrabooks we've seen. But for an on-the-go individual looking for a computer with solid battery life, a durable chassis, a Windows 8 touchscreen or game-capable graphics, and a very reasonable price point, the 14-inch Aspire M5 is a fantastic deal.Photo